Agreed, and I hope they can find a solution soon. I love everything about Inkscape, except that and a couple other things. The same happens with the GIMP (ignoring that a plugin --Separate+-- exists). The day these problems are solved, it will be the salvation of people like me, who are trying to have career in design, while still supporting open source software alternatives for their professional works.

I know this subject has been brought up before, but I wanted to share my humble opinion on the matter.

I'm in the same position as Arwym here: I prefer to use the open source versions of design software as, for some reason, I find them easier to use and less restrictive in terms of tools and effects. I hate having to design something 'The Adobe Way' using the prescriptive methods, menus and styles. Does my head in.

I've done a few jobs by exporting 300dpi PNGs to GIMP, then using the Separate plug-in, and it works to a degree, but for revisions and amendments it becomes really laborious and frustrating, not to mention risky on colour-matching. I would love - absolutely love - a full implementation of CMYK modelling to be brought to Inkscape. It would really open up the sphere of what we could do as designers.

Of course! I promised not to use Illustrator never more after I discover Inkscape 4.7 this two last weeks and... after only some days I'm using it again , cause I have to make some printable work that I must send to printer's... So, well, although this seems like a very common issue, I only wanted to add my vote too.

PS: Thanks (anyway) for every one of other wonderful feature that I still have! Specially for Clones and Path Effects

Richard Querin and I have had some brief discussions on doing a future screencast on using FOSS tools to convert an rgb image to cmyk. We have have already tried the Gimp and Scribus ways. They seem to work alright but to be honest, neither Richard nor I have a lot experience with cmyk images. Can't really judge if they are great methods. Anyway, I was playing around with a third alternative a few weeks ago, Imagemagick. Unfortunately, I need someone with cmyk experience to let me know if it's an option that works.

I have taken an image that I had made in Inkscape and exported as png. Obviously it is in rgb color. I used this command to convert the rgb image to cmyk...I think.

After the conversion, when I open the cmyk_file.png in Gimp, I get a nag screen that reads something like, this is a cmyk file...would you like to convert it to rgb? So it makes me believe I have a cmyk image but the AdobeRGB1998.icc profile has the name RGB in it so I'm not sure if I have done it correctly. I have other icc profiles to choose from but I'm a n00b at it so I can't tell which I should be using. If someone is willing to help me then I'd be glad to work on it with them. Perhaps we can figure out a method or two for tackling this issue.

UPDATE: Hang on! I just checked the converted image with identify and it's still an rgb image. FAIL! I'll keep plugging away...

I use ImageMagick to convert RGB to CMYK, and it works great. My syntax, omitting additional conversions, is essentially the same as yours: "mogrify -path cmyk/ -profile=/.../RGB.icc -profile=/.../USWebCoatedSWOP.icc *.jpeg". (I forgot the actual name of the RGB profile). Of course, this method requires that the right profiles be installed. Images converted in this way cause no major problems with the publisher.

Note that imagemagick can rasterize vector images during conversion, which may not be the best idea if high-quality prints are desired.

It's only a sad read if you're misinterpreting it. He's not saying Inkscape shouldn't support CMYK. He's saying the developers shouldn't be thinking only in terms of CMYK when implementing alternate color workflows, because that would end up to be too limiting.